I have an embarrassing ability that allows me to remember everything about other people – just not about myself.
I moved house recently and almost everyday, I tell myself, “Pick up your mixer and vanilla extract from XXXX’s house so you can bake some cookies because cookies are good,” but inevitably at the first sight of something shiny and distracting, the idea vaporizes. Or on the other hand, I will remember your favorite beer, facial hair patterns, how you like your tea, whether your socks matched and the make of your jeans. Upon our first meeting. I’m like Rain Man, minus the whole being a genius thing. (RIP, by the way.)
I am sort of terrified to lose this talent of mine because I tend to enjoy it at times, but most other times it makes me feel like an obsessed loser – especially in a town like Asheville where I am lucky if someone remembers me at all, even after our third meeting at BoBo. I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but some people are a little …flaky here sometimes. So just because I remember your mother’s maiden name, my “obsessed loser” self-deprecation benders continue.
I wonder if it’s due in part to my addiction to rosemary oil? I get my hair did at Dang (Daang? Dangg?) found in the Phil Mechanic building and they told me it’s good for the hair. I find it to be a very under-valued herb, too. My point: The 5 ml bottle I bought at Earthfare claims it improves the mems’. I am willing to believe. I WANT TO BELIEVE.
For some reason, (target demographic?) the NYTimes has a shit ton of articles about memory or rather the loss of it, mostly as it relates to middle-agedom and blogs about coping with diseases like Alzheimer’s. Or this:
In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.
Oh hell yes, David Brooks! Sell that paper! I don’t really get his point in this op-ed … but I like his style. I compare most things to sex, too.
What I will say is that it is easy to have a faulty memory these days when everyone is a iPhone/Google/Cha-Cha/text away from a Mensa membership. I’m guilty of course but I usually try to restrain myself until I can’t stand it any longer. Like I really need to know the rate of speed a camel’s eyelash grows. I just pulled that out of the air but I feel like I need to know now…crap.
See. Are we really more enlightened by technology or are we a bunch of faux know-it-all’s? I guess as long as you can retain the information long enough to have an opportunity to regurgitate it without a web-assist, then it was worth it.
Posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 1:28 pm. Filed under: blog Tags: Asheville, memory, probably embarrassing myself, technology RSS 2.0 feed.
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Technological singularity is on its way